Oneida: 'Skins 'slur' bad as Sterling

The leader of the Oneida Indian Nation said Friday the Washington Redskins name is a “dictionary-defined slur” that must be changed.

“It’s a dictionary-defined slur. I think even in [Los Angeles Clippers owner] Donald Sterling’s comments — I don’t know if he used an actually dictionary-defined slur, but he still conveyed a message,” Ray Halbritter, nation representative, said on MSNBC’s “Jansing & Co.”

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Halbritter, who has been leading the effort to get rid of the name, praised the National Basketball Association for handling Sterling’s racist remarks “in the correct way.”

The debate over the team’s use of “redskin”—which Merriam-Webster online dictionary describes as “usually offensive” — reached new heights in D.C. after 50 senators signed a letter Thursday urging NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Redskins owner Dan Snyder to change the team’s name.

“This is a question of which side people are going to stand on, which side the NFL will stand on. There is no gray area in this name,” Halbritter said. “The NFL is one of the most powerful cultural forces in America and, indeed, possibly the world. And these symbols matter.”

Halbritter said that “momentum is increasing” on the issue.

Echoing Halbritter was the District of Columbia’s Democratic delegate to Congress, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is pushing a bill that would cancel the team’s trademark of the name.

“It really pains us in Washington, we who love the team, to see that we’re having to drag Goodell and Snyder by the cuffs to do what the counterpart NBA team leader did right off of the bat,” Norton said. “We need some leadership here from the NFL the way we’ve gotten it in the NBA.”